Lascabes to Le Charlton - 26k

The day starts off bright and cold turning into a lovely day. The mixture of warmth and rolling countryside made the trip to the lovely Montcuq very enjoyable. The village itself has a lot of Brit expats, complete with a shelf at the front of the grocery store selling rich tea, baked beans & HP sauce… how depressing, heaven knows what the locals think of the English in general and the ex pats in particular.

I bought The Times...hypocrisy or what! We then settled down to coffee and croissants in the local bar. After lingering as long as we dare, Elisabeth and (we bought some food for the evening meal as we knew there wouldn’t be any at the Gîte.)

Walking out of the village there was a shop that sold English books. Now if you were carrying just one paperback (I had sent mine home) this could be very important bit of news.

At Lauzerte Elisabeth left me for the shorter route while I relived old memories. This Bastide town was built in the 12c and stands out like a lantern over the surrounding area (I believe the name translation of Lauzerte is lantern) this was the place I first talked to someone who was in the middle of the Chemin 3 years ago.

A Scotsman who had completed the Spanish bit a few years earlier and was doing his 30k a day to finish off the first stage. I think it is this guy that gave me the idea that 30k was what you did. At the time I did one of my ‘coffee sketches’ of him in the square.

Elisabeth had arrived and we sat in the evening sunlight, before she kindly cooked our supper (my side of the deal was to carry it from the Montcuq) Joy of Joy’s we could use a washing machine and a dryer for 3.5 Euros each machine. So we went for an economy drive and shared a wash.

The Gite at Le Charlton